Draco and Intent: Re: Snape and Harry’s Sadism (was: Lack of re-examination)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186790

Carol earlier:
> > 
> > The problem is, there's no "right" reading, including JKR's own, which is often inconsistent with or unsupported by canon. She remembers her own books incorrectly, whether it's the Slytherins returning with Slughorn (maybe they did, but Harry didn't see them and so the narrator didn't report them) or Draco's already having a hand of Glory and Ron's knowing about it or skulls in the Slytherin Common Room.
> 
> jkoney:
> I disagree. I think the author has a much better idea of the character, their backround, and the plot compared to any of us. I think some things may have been edited out and a consistancy check wasn't done well or I believe the author has the idea in their notes and believes they have written it (otherwise things wouldn't make sense) in some fashion. So when they get questioned they like of course the Slytherins returned....
> 
> If the author is alive and has just recently finished the book I believe we can rely on their memory for what they were writing. As time goes on, I believe they can be believed if they have looked through their notes.

Carol again:
What the author can tell us about her book or her intentions in writing her book is only helpful to some degree with regard to specific characters and circumstances and only if the intentions are actually realized within the book itself. Let's say that she intends Ginny to be Harry's ideal wife (as she does). Not every reader is going to agree with her. Or she intends Dumbledore to be "the epitome of goodness." Again, not every reader will agree that she has succeeded in transferring her intention from her own mind to the text itself.

The thing about literary analysis is that it starts with the text itself and then *analyzes* it. It sounds as if I'm stating the obvious, but my point is that words on a page do not have a single obvious meaning. Sometimes they're deliberately misleading (JKR is fond of red herrings and misdirection). We can't always believe the narrator, who sees from Harry's point of view, nor can we always believe the characters, even the good ones. Sometimes we're told straight out what really happened (although there are usually gaps in the story); sometimes we have to figure out for ourselves that the explanations the characters have given are wrong or inadequate. Was Harry right or wrong that Draco had a Dark Mark, for example? We aren't told, and he was on the tower before the DEs set up a barrier that only someone with a Dark Mark could pass through. So we have to sift the evidence for ourselves and arrive at our own conclusions. (In this case, there may indeed be a "right" answer that only JKR knows, but she hasn't given it and it's not in the books themselves.)

But literary analysis usually operates on a more sophisticated level. We could look, for example, at the influence of life at the Dursleys on Harry. The story states nothing directly except the incidents themselves and Harry's immediate reaction, but we could argue, for example, that life with the Dursleys was an instance of good coming out of evil (a common motif in the books). It may have toughened him or given him a resilience that, say, the pampered James would not have had. I think we can safely say that it prevented him from sharing Ron's fear of spiders (which derives from the Twins, particularly Fred). Or we could analyze the effects of having the Twins as older brothers on Ron.

And the influence of one character on another is only one of many things we can examine that JKR never talks about in her interviews and the narrator doesn't state directly in the books. We can look at the parallels between Harry and some other character, say Neville or Snape or LV, and explore their significance.

We can talk about influences on JKR's writing (in which case, it would be nice to have her input; we don't want to assume that she's read a book she's never heard of). Or we can explore the role of mythology or English boarding school culture or Christianity or any number of elements. We can look at genre. In what ways are the books mystery stories? In what ways does Harry's story match the hero's journey? In what ways is it a Bildungsroman? What about elements of the Gothic novel?

There's a lot more to literary analysis than the author's stated intentions can tell us. What we need to do is examine the text itself, looking for irony, ambiguity, narrative technique, influences, parallels, and many other things. We have to look beyond the literal meaning of the words on the page, which may be ambiguous or misleading or incomplete or just plain wrong (as when Harry will surely die from a Crucio, for example). We need to put it all together. But unlike a jigsaw puzzle, in which there's only one right solution, there are an infinite number of valid readings. (Of course, there are also obviously wrong readings as well, those that are not supported by or are in conflict with the text. "Fenrir Greyback is a tragic hero" is pretty clearly a wrong reading, for example. So is "Wormtail's hand is the unnamed fourth Deathly Hallow.")
> 
Carol earlier:
> > Any reading, whether it matches JKR's stated intentions or not, is a "right" reading as long as it can be supported by the text. It's only "wrong" when the next book reveals it as wrong (as Betsy's reading of Draco as Harry's future best friend turned out to be). Until DH came out, both DDM!Snape and ESE!Snape were valid readings because the evidence for both was in the text. We just didn't know which were clues and which were red herrings till we found out in "The Prince's Tale."
> 
jkoney:
> But in this case their is a straightforward right way of reading the interactions of Harry and Draco. By the time the scene on the train is over, if you still believe they are going to be friends then you aren't actually reading the story as it is written. Just because something happened in another book doesn't mean it is going to happen in this one. That is adding things that don't exist to this story.
> 
> By the time those first two Harry Draco scenes are over, Harry knows more than enough about Draco: bully, arrogant, etc. that he isn't going to be friends with him. He just left the Dursley's why would he want to hang around with the same type of person?
> 
Carol:
Yes, "Draco is destined to be Harry's best friend" is a "wrong" reading (though I can see why Betsy read that trope into the first book). But we still interpret Draco Malfoy in different ways. Even Harry learns to see him with new eyes, somewhat sympathetically, and Draco himself evolves as a character. That's the type of thing that's subject to analysis. We could ask how the Malfoys function in the novel and what it means to us as readers (regardless of JKR's intention) that they survived relatively unscathed, already having been punished quite severely by LV himself. Note the irony that they would have remained loyal to him had he not done so.
 
> > Carol
> > But there are still many matters for which we have no official canon explanation, or for which the canon explanation is unclear or incomplete (the Elder Wand, for example, or the whole concept of "the Master of Death"). We're still debating character's motivations (and whether there's a rule against hair clips shaped like butterflies!).
> 
> jkoney:
> I agree their are a few things like the elder wand that I would like to have more details on. On others I believe JKR thought we would use some common sense and know that wizards went to the toilet, showered, shaved, etc. 

Carol responds:
Yes, but those things aren't matters for literary analysis. However, we might examine the sorts of things that JKR takes for granted and see where that leads us.

jkoney: 
> She would think that we would understand that Hogwarts was based on the British boarding school ideas and that they had dress codes. She doesn't go into detail but she gives us a uniform list. From their she expects us to extrapolate to a dress code that these schools would have, such as rules for clothes, shoes, hair, nails and jewelry. All things dress codes normally have. 
> 
> That line was an unforgettable one to me. It never occurred to me that McGonegall was doing anything but enforcing (IMO, the obvious) the dress code during a high profile school event. I remember teachers being stressed at these type of events and enforcing every little rule. (I had to dry shave because my cheezy little mustache was showing and it was seen before one event)

Carol responds:
Whereas it never occurred to me that she was doing anything except wanting the students in her House to look their best and not embarrass the school. That there might be a rule against wearing colorful hair decorations during the TWT (which happens extremely rarely) never occurred to me. And, of course, any such rules if they exist are suspended for the Yule Ball. It's clear that such regulations don't normally exist or Luna couldn't wear her much more ridiculous accessories, presumably to class though she doesn't have any classes with Harry. And the High Inquisitor herself wouldn't wear a pink Alice band or perky little hair bows in OoP. It might set a bad example for the children.

> > Carol
> > There is not and can never be a single "right" reading of the books. If there were, this list would not exist.
> > 
> >jkoney
> Well I still think Harry is the hero of the book even though I've had people tell me he's not.

Carol:
I think we can agree that not seeing Harry as the hero qualifies as a "wrong" reading. (I did read one interesting article arguing for Snape as hero, but that's only because Harry for some reason failed to meet that critic's criteria for a hero.)

Carol, who would be interested in seeing JKR's notes for any light they might shed on the books but would consider them as secondary canon at best since they only reveal what she intended to do or might have done but didn't